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“... by 24 pounds of various substances twice a day for two weeks. (With admirable judiciousness, Brian Levack, the author of The Devil Within, warns that ‘the veracity of such reports can be questioned on a number of grounds.’) Some young women’s limbs grew so stiff that the efforts of several muscular men proved insufficient to bend them, while ...”

“... credit’. It is magnificent: but it needs a lot of thinking about after the dazzlement is over. Brian Levack and Linda Levy Peck write about the reign of James I, a subject to which Professor Hexter returned recently with a devastating attack on the so-called ‘revisionists’: those who believe either that the English Civil War was an accident with ...”

“... these zones, the real epicentres of witch-hunting were Germany, Switzerland and France, where, Brian Levack has estimated, perhaps 75 per cent of all prosecutions occurred. The fundamental enigma of the European witch craze is the pattern of its development in time and space: why it erupted when it did, whom it attacked, why and how it affected ...”

“... early modern French demoniacs, cites the use of an exorcism manual in a legal case from 1993; Brian Levack’s cultural history of exorcism, The Devil Within (2013), derived from his experience of fostering a child survivor of exorcistic abuse. High-profile outbreaks of possession tend to occur at moments of cultural turbulence, and it is tempting to ...”